Songfacts®:

• Billy Bragg's sentimental anthem "Levi Stubbs' Tears" starts with a woman using insurance money from an "accident" to escape to a mobile home. Then, like a flick of a lighter illuminating a past scene, the song rewinds. We learn of her youthful mistake, marrying too young to the wrong guy. During years of abandonment and domestic violence she plays Motown classics to ease the pain of her ruined life.
• The title references Levi Stubbs, the iconic lead singer of The Four Tops. Bragg namechecks three other Motown legends too: producers and songwriters Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, and Holland-Dozier-Holland.
  
  Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
  Are here to make everything right that's wrong
  Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier too
  Are here to make it all okay with you
  
  Normally "Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier" are referred to as "Holland, Dozier, and Holland." There's a subtle but interesting twist here. "Holland & Holland" also happens to be a famous British gun manufacturer. Wording it this way adds a layer of dark irony, especially considering the violent events later described in the song (the "accident").
• According to Bragg, a chatty radio DJ (and occasional roadie) inspired the fictional tale.
  
  "I was on a cross-Channel ferry, and he was annoying the f--k out of me," Bragg told Mojo magazine. "He wouldn't stop talking. So, I switched off and started thinking about Bruce Springsteen's approach of taking a character and walking them through a situation. Once I had the first line, 'With the money from the accident she bought herself a mobile home, it was: Bam! But there is no routine with songwriting. You're trying to tune into a signal. Sometimes you lose the signal. Sometimes it is so powerful that you write the whole thing in 20 minutes."
• The song's raw emotion resonated. Released as the lead single from Bragg's third album, Talking with the Taxman about Poetry, it peaked at #29 on the UK Singles chart.
• Norman Cook sampled the guitar riff for his 1989 UK Top 40 hit "Won't Talk About It," which features Bragg's soulful falsetto vocals. The track got even more attention a year later when it was re-released after the success of Beats International's "Dub Be Good To Me," without the guitar riff and with a new singer.
• In 2014, NME ranked "Levi Stubbs' Tears" at #207 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.